French workers hold Goodyear execs hostage

Published: 06 Jan 2014 12:37 GMT+01:00

French workers facing job cuts rarely lie down without a fight and are often prepared to resort to extreme measures, which was the case at a doomed Goodyear tyre factory in northern France on Monday, where two bosses were being held captive.

Reports of the kidnapping first appeared in the regional newspaper Courrier Picard which said employees at the plant took production manager Michel Dheilly and Human Resources director Bernard Glesser, against their will.

The newspaper says a large tractor tyre has been wedged up against a meeting room door to prevent the pair leaving.

Representatives from France's biggest trade union the CGT, subsequently confirmed the two bosses had been captured.

"They are firing everyone without giving them a say in it," the CGT's Mickaël Warmen told The Local, when asked why workers had taken the move.

His colleague in the CGT Jurek added: "We want to return to the negotiating table and to see if there is a buyer, and if there is no buyer, then we want a voluntary redundancy plan for everyone with a lot of money."

Jurek said the decision to take the executives hostage was made on Saturday and represented a "change in tactics" after they had grown fed up of losing battles through the courts.

The Goodyear factory hit the news last year when France’s Minister for Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg, wrote to America CEO Maurice Taylor, who runs the firm Titan, pleading with him to come to their aid.

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